Have you ever been ghosted? No I’m not referring to entities from the other world but real human beings who just disappear from your life without a warning. They block you on social media, refuse to answer your calls and totally cut you off from their life without giving any reason. If you have, you know how distressing that feeling is. I’ve been ghosted so many times that I’ve lost count. Initially I didn’t even know there was a name for it, I just lived with this feeling of deep hurt and betrayal that I held on to in secret. I thought I was alone in this experience but as I grew older and the world of social media opened up, I realised there were thousands like me.

I have a few questions for the many men and one woman who have ghosted me

• Why do you do it? Talk to me for days, encourage me to make you a part of my life. And then, just disappear?
• Why do you do it? Tell me that no matter how I look, we will definitely still be friends—because our chats are so much fun, “almost electric”. And then, just disappear?
• Why do you do it? Tell me that I’m beautiful and funny and cute and you can’t wait to spend more time together. And then, just disappear?
• Why did you do it? I consider you my best friend, I share all my innermost thoughts with you and then, all of a sudden, you take my friendship and disappear?
• Is it really that hard to tell me that you’d rather not stay friends with me or continue to be in touch?
• Do you choose to disappear because you are scared of a confrontation? Or is it because you think I’ll make a scene?

Why it hurts so much

Everyone has dreams. Agreed, parts of them may come together in your head with the help of unrealistic TV shows and movies. These dreams are full of grand romances and blissful friendships, full of spontaneous travel and unquestioned loyalty. But then you get torn away from these dreams and brought down to cold realistic earth where your partner-in-crime is long gone. I wish I knew when someone was going to ghost me so I could tell them how much it hurts. It hurts that you think I’d beg you to stay if you didn’t want to. It hurts that you never really cared at all. It hurts that you never really knew me at all.

It’s a special kind of hurt that betrayal brings with it. And most of us react in one of two ways; we either shut down and handle every future interaction with a double dose of cynicism, or hold on tenuously to hope by living in denial. I have somehow found a Golden Mean between the two extremes—my terrible memory issues helps me block out the names of these people [though the memories of the feelings remain] and my rising cynicism ensures that I no longer trust anyone easily anymore. For example, I still remember how this chat friend drove past me when I was waiting to meet him for the first time and then switched off his phone. I also still remember the gentleman who blocked me on WhatsApp after a few meetings because I was “too much of a prude”.

Is it really so hard to be honest about something not working out and concluding it in a decent manner? Be honest and remove yourself in a dignified manner. If the other person is being problematic and you have to them block him/her, everybody would understand. But at least respect them enough to simply be honest with them.

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• Use of sharp tones
• Non-acceptance of what is, what people say and what they do. Judging them wrongly
• Putting people in a tight spot, correcting them all the time
• Cutting people. Making people defensive by catching their words
• Replying literally to mere words rather than understanding the context
• Criticising, blaming, negative thinking and fault finding. Use of abusive or hurtful words
• Disturbed inner energy
• Haphazard breathing pattern
• Communicating everything, heightened righteousness
• Trying to love deeply and becoming possessive
• Inability to speak concisely, with few, sweet, slow-paced and gently spoken words.

We are the world

People are all the same at the core. Anything spoken out of unawareness triggers the unawareness in others. Psychologically everybody is the same, only actions seem to differ. We have the same brains but we don’t see it the same way because we have been competing with each other, artificially marking the brains as different. It is so evident that across the world human beings are suffering. We are living in a world of shortage; there is so much anxiety, fear, insecurity, confusion, mental illnesses, fear of getting hurt [emotionally and physically] and fear of death.

Initially, I tried to stay away from what I didn’t like in people and realised that I felt very uncomfortable. I resisted a lot to accept what I didn’t like in others. The transformation came when I started seeing myself in my friends, my parents, my neighbours, and the world as an extension of myself, just like my hands are am extension of me. The engine, i.e. the brain, is the same in all of us with just a difference in our interpretations, which is the root cause of all fights and conflicts around us. Once you start seeing yourself in others, you will not have to change anybody.

Other people have their conditioning, we have ours. They react to our conditioning; we see their reaction and not the reason behind it, which could be us or the way they see us.
We want to feel included in our circles all the time, accepted by people and for this we try to be significant and instead get excluded from our groups. Psychologically, our attempts to gain significance put us on a higher pedestal and others around us on a lower one. This gives a boost to our ego. The ego feels great in defeating people. Whereas when you drop the significance, you reach the other person’s level and are included by default. Significance is trying to be important or standing out from the rest. People are selling their happy stories all the time, they have become salesmen. Our naturalness is almost lost as people are more interested in showing us how happy they are by posting pictures on social media than in actually being happy. This has made us dependent on how many “likes” we receive for a social media post.

When the race to earn money and respect is over, we genuinely pursue what we, in our consciousness, want to do. When you think of making others win, contributing to the larger game, and accept their weaknesses, you surpass the ego and reach the natural state of consciousness.

You feel uncomfortable even amongst your own people because the ego has many expectations and gets hurt easily. With your own people the baggage that you carry is almost constant and much more than it is with strangers. But when you become aware and there is attention in the present, egoistic thoughts cease to make an impact. When you are able to practice this for some time, you will stop deriving pleasure from other people’s losses. Once your expectations drop, you naturally feel happy with people and the relationship then can be enjoyed at a much different level.

Our world reflects what we are

Once a dog ran into a museum where all the walls, the ceiling, the door and even the floor were made of mirrors. Seeing this, the dog froze in surprise in the middle of the hall, a whole pack of dogs surrounding it on all sides from above and below. The dog bared his teeth and all the reflections responded to it in the same way. Frightened, the dog frantically barked. The reflections imitated the bark and resounded many times. The dog barked even harder and the echo kept building. The dog tossed from one side to another, biting the air, his reflections also tossed around snapping their teeth. Next morning, the museum security guards found the miserable dog, lifeless and surrounded by equally lifeless million reflections. There was nobody who would have harmed the dog. Everything that is happening around us is the reflection of our own thoughts, feelings and karma. The negativity that stands between you and the right path is solely yours and not theirs.

Right action

When you have attention, you have energy and the thoughts lose control. So disruptive thoughts don’t operate anymore and right action takes place. Anything you do with an agenda or a planned outcome leads to pain as agendas and outcomes lie in the future and bliss in the present. All outcome-oriented actions are actually reactions to thoughts of tomorrow. The present is the place and when you act from it, it is appropriate and not in duality. Otherwise the mind keeps thinking “was what I did right or not” as the mind struggles with the past and the future. Right action is not possible when you are suffering because of uncertainty, unhappiness, insecurity, greed, envy, competitiveness and violence. Right actions are possible when the suffering stops.

How to be a good observer

When in public, observe your need to prove something, when with friends see the comparisons you make, when with parents see how you try to fix situations so that it doesn’t reflect badly on you, when scared see how the ego justifies your acts, see how you wonder whether or not people are looking at you, always seeking attention, see your thoughts about others, about yourself, about life. See how the ego keeps judging you internally, your actions, decisions and behaviour. People kill animals and then pray, “Thank you for feeding us.” It’s their ego that protects them from going into guilt mode. The ego always wants to be morally upright instead of correcting its own actions. It does not correct them because it is made through attachments. So it cannot correct itself by default. It is attached to what it feels is right for it, irrespective of the results it is getting.

You need a sharp mind to observe things but it is blunt because it is always running and we have not given it any rest. Once you will have the sharpness of the mind, you will be able to observe the movements of your thoughts.

Observe every bit of you. Just watch the way you walk, talk, smile, laugh, cry, behave, the words you use, the decisions you make, the food you eat, alcohol you consume, the cigarettes you smoke, your relationship, your image in your own eyes, the way people see you, your attempts at defining yourself through success and the clothes you wear. Just be present totally to yourself, your intentions, your conditioning, the way you think, the things you like, dislike, your judgments about others, about yourself, the way you perceive things, the way you assume things, and everything that is you and related to you. The moment you become present towards all this, without getting caught in opinions and judgments, a transformation will take place. The intensity with which you observe will determine the speed at which the transformation will happen. What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that, you have lost everything.

Adapted with permission from Freedom from the I by Shashank Kasliwal, published by Jaico Books

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Susie and Charlie have brains that are wired differently. The introvert prefers his internal theatre, and judicious doses of external stimulus, carefully chosen. Hence, he has fewer friends, prefers smaller crowds, and tends to gravitate to the periphery of a party.

The extrovert finds little stimulation internally, and craves much external variety and excitement. They are hence gregarious, prefer larger crowds, and tend to be in the centre of the action.

Both states are personal preferences, and have to do with levels of brain stimulation.

• The cortex of an introvert is naturally highly stimulated. So, excessive external stimulation may lead to overload.
• The extrovert, on the other hand, is naturally less cortically stimulated, and so seeks external stimulation to add to what is missing.

There is a certain balance in the behaviour and desires of both extroverts and introverts. They are both seeking the same thing—an acceptable, balanced level of cortical stimulation. Nothing is broken, nothing to fix. How Zen!

The problem comes when we judge a person’s preference to be ‘wrong’ or in need of fixing just because they act differently from us. That’s one of the reasons why people sometimes end up dating their opposites and end up clashing.

Charlie, the introvert, is sitting around one day, deeply immersed in a project. He has a thought, “Hmm. My friend Susie, the extrovert, says I spend too much time by myself, and there are moments when I wish I was more social.” If Charlie was wise, he’d find a therapist and have a look at how to open himself to more experiences. But Charlie isn’t wise. So, he calls up Susie and asks her out on a date. She agrees, because:

1. She thinks it might be good to slow down a bit, while…
2. She fixes Charlie.

The model both are using: something’s wrong with the other person and must be fixed. As a result, both will collide repeatedly, over their different preferences. Don’t get me wrong, Susie and Charlie can be friends. But it’s tricky. The only way it can work is if they monitor their cortical stimulation [which will be somewhere between not enough and overload] and find their own point of comfort. When the introvert is getting too much or the extrovert too little, it’s time to call it a night.

Introversion is misunderstood [except by other introverts]

• Introversion is often mistaken for shyness. But it’s not the same. Shyness is a label for the anxiety felt when thinking about interacting with others. Introverts are not anxious. They simply prefer their own company. Many introverts are excellent public speakers, and willingly engage with the public as teachers or artists. Give them something that interests them, and they’ll gladly explain it, elegantly.
• Introversion is not standoffishness. People who tend towards introversion are not bored with others, nor do they think they are ‘better’ than others. Biologically, the introvert’s cortex is easily stimulated. To avoid overload, introverts limit their connection to the external environment to remain in balance.
• Introverts are interested primarily in their inner experience. While many introverts choose the helping professions such as that of a counsellor, it’s not because they love listening to others go on and on. I’m rather high on the introversion scale. I tell my clients that I do what I do in order to learn about myself. I’m interested in what I’ll come up with in response to my client’s issues. Here’s the thing: the introvert is not reacting to a dread—introverts do not feel a sense of social discomfort. The introvert is acting according to personal [and cortical] preference.

Introversion is not a flaw [neither is extroversion]. It’s a preference. All you need to remember is that introverts are already well stimulated—so you relate the best with them by providing a minimum of drama. And the extrovert? They need more, more, more! Take ‘em dancing! When it comes to preferences, there’s no right, no wrong. Just different. And as the French say… vive la difference [long live the difference]

This was first published in the May 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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